A gap of six years followed Randall Garrett’s sole Lord Darcy novel Too Many Magicians (1967) before he returned to the universe. Was that time well-spent in creating another strong fusion of mystery, magic, and murder?
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This first English translation of The Secret of the Pointed Tower (1937) by Pierre Véry was a cause of great excitement when announced, and I regret only that the complexity of the multi-limbed TBR has delayed me this long in getting to it.
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When young Frank Conway returns to his hotel on the edge of the South Downs one evening in a distracted frame of mind, none of the other denizens of the Fernbank think much of it. His request for an audience with various people are rejected in the rush for dinner and when, over that same meal, Conway dies in an agonising and protracted manner, many of the people present begin to regret their thoughtlessness. Conway’s final movements then fall under the remit of local man Inspector Baines, and, with the dead man’s sister also in attendance, two parallel investigations are run…but which will bear fruit first? And how does the sighting of a ghastly half man, half monster on the Downs tie into events?
More magic, mummery, and misdirection from Randall Garrett’s alternate history Europe, and this time a bit of an impossible crime thrown in to boot. Not that he makes much of that element.
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Thanks to the ongoing efforts of the wonderful British Library Crime Classics range, I have an improving impression of the work of Ethel Lina White — the excellent ‘Water Running Out’ (1927) was included in the Crimes of Cymru [ss] (2023) collection and The Wheel Spins (1936) was a superb little thriller which did well with its highly appealing setup. All of which saw me snap up a copy of The Spiral Staircase, a.k.a. Some Must Watch (1933) when one drifted into my orbit, and, well, this shows again how effective White can be with a small number of people in a restricted setting…even if, at times, she’d rather have them get together and talk over old ground instead of getting on with the story.
Another Tuesday, another Lord Darcy story, in which Randall Garrett mixes magic and detection in an alternate-history Europe.
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I promised you more podcast, and wouldn’t have blamed you for not believing me; but more podcast there is today for your listening pleasure.
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“[H]ow stressful can this game really be? A few nights in a peaceful hamlet at Christmas, trying to make sense of a puzzle? What could possibly go wrong?”. Well, an unseasonally heavy snowfall could maroon everyone, and then a murderer could start picking off the isolated denizens of the peaceful hamlet of Midwinter. But, if they can survive the slaughter, the six people who have been invited by the Midwinter Trust to take part in the competition, called Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife, are unlikely to want to leave because the prize they can win is…well it’s fabulous, isn’t it? It must be. Although, now you come to mention it, what is the prize?
Perhaps two decades a go, I read some, but not all, of the Lord Darcy series of stories by Randall Garrett, in which detection is augmented with magic. And I’ve been telling people they’re good ever since. So for Tuesdays this, and another as-yet-undetermined future, month let’s take this Fantasy Masterworks volume of the complete stories — 10 shorts, and the novel Too Many Magicians (1967) — and see how they stand up.
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The Invisible Event 